Dose lightning come from the sky or ground

I heard from my sis and dad ground my mom sky which is it?!

I have pursued this very question sporadically for quite some time now. What I have gathered is that lightning can go either way. When it goes from the cloud to the ground (C to G), a leader first shoots up from the ground. This I believe resembles a lightning stroke except that it is much smaller and dimmer. I think I might have gotten one on video, but I'm not sure. The major stroke, from the cloud to the ground, follows the pathway through the air that was made by this leader.

I don't know anything about ground to cloud lightning, so I can't say whether it exists or not.

Lightning can also be entirely within clouds, in which case it is called C to C.

Hopefully this information will give you more vocabulary to use in a web search on the subject. Good luck!

Both,either direction and cloud to cloud.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning

From clouds to groud

no it comes from me